Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam legislator K K S S R Ramachandran said on Wednesday that the charge of assault levelled by All-India Anna DMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa in 1989 against Duraimurugan, who was then a minister in the Tamil Nadu government, was stage-managed.

Ramachandran, who was then in the AIADMK himself, claimed that Jayalalithaa, who is now the chief minister, had told him at her Poes Garden residence in Chennai on the morning of March 25, 1989, to back up her claim.

Ramachandran is the second former aide of Jayalalithaa to deny the charge against Duraimurugan now. S Thirunavukkarasar, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, had also denied it in the assembly after leaving the AIADMK in the late 1990s.

Ramachandran said he and his colleagues were told that if they disrupted the assembly proceedings and prevented then chief minister M Karunanidhi from presenting the budget, the Centre would intervene in the state.

But nothing of the sort alleged by Jayalalithaa had happened, he said. "Neither did Duraimurugan pull at the pallu [sari fall] and the hair of Jayalalithaa, nor was I anywhere near him trying to stop him from doing so."

As the assembly erupted in turmoil on Ramachandran's new statement, he, Duraimurugan and other legislators of the DMK were bundled out by the watch and ward staff at the instance of Speaker K Kalimuthu.

Earlier, Leader of the Opposition K Anbazhagan, DMK general secretary, staged a protest walkout after the speaker denied him permission to make a clarification on Jayalalithaa's reiteration of the earlier charge in the House.

Duraimurugan insisted he was not involved in any incident of the kind, and the denial of opportunity for him was aimed at getting only the chief minister's version documented in the assembly records.

Later, DMK president M Karunanidhi said Jayalalithaa's government was trampling upon the democratic traditions of the assembly. He said the DMK members would attend the session wearing black badges to protest against the murder of democracy by Speaker Kalimuthu.

The issue returned to the fore after so many years on Wednesday when Jayalalithaa, clarifying the position after Forward Bloc member L Santhanam, an ally of the AIADMK, referred to the existence of various versions of the 1989 incident. The chief minister said Karunanidhi had used certain expletives against her, provoking his legislators to attack her.